Online Safety

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Vallance of Balham

Thursday 16th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I think the noble Lord is right that Ofcom has a very large task ahead of it. It is a very professional organisation and one that takes all its duties very seriously. I cannot comment in detail on what it is doing on the media side, but I know that that is part of what it intends to do. I will pick up on something else he said: the urgency now is to get this implemented and the danger is that we add lots of things to it now. We must get on and do this. It is very important to get this working. We know that the enforcement starts just after March and that the new codes for children will come out in early summer. Getting this moving is the key priority, and working out how to stop the really unacceptable activity that goes on on some of these sites.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, is the Minister sensitive to the dangers to free speech of overfetishising online safety and to the censorship recently admitted to by the head of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg? This is all under the cloak of Governments demanding the clamping down on online harms. Are the Government advising Ofcom to ensure that any overzealousness, however well intentioned, should be reined in for the protection of free speech in a democratic society?